Latest Stories In HLS 200:

People: Michael Klarman

As part of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association’s (APALSA) annual conference, “Soft Power Hard Knockout: The Asian American Punch,” on Feb. 4, Harvard Law School presented a re-enactment of the Vincent Chin trial, written by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Professor Michael Klarman’s “The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution” gathers for the first time in a single volume the tumultuous story of the 1787 creation of our nation’s founding document, in the kind of rich detail earlier reserved for multivolume works.

During the fall 2016 semester, a group of leading scholars came together at Harvard Law School for the lecture series, “Diversity and US Legal History,” which was sponsored by Dean Martha Minow and organized by Professor Mark Tushnet, who also designed a reading group to complement the lectures.

In celebration of Constitution Day—the annual commemoration of the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787—several Harvard Law School professors spoke about the document upon which the American legal and political systems have been built.

Since at least 1983, when Harvard Law student Evan Wolfson ’83 wrote a third-year paper exploring a human rights argument for same-sex marriage, Harvard Law School has participated in anticipating, shaping, critiquing, analyzing and guiding the long path toward marriage equality.

During a Sept. 26 discussion at Harvard Law School, moderated by Dean Martha Minow, four of the School’s constitutional experts offered their thoughts on a trio of critical U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action.

To commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman, an expert on constitutional law and constitutional history, gave a lecture at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, Sept. 17. His talk, titled “Not Written in Stone,” focused on the reasons he believes the U.S. Constitution should not be given undue reverence.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on several major cases including United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry in regard to same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas on Affirmative Action, and Shelby County v. Holder, which concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A number of HLS faculty shared their opinions of the rulings on the radio, television, on the web and in print.